The Nation; Becoming Unstuck On the Suburbs

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Published: October 19, 1997

PLYWOOD has a lifespan of 40 years. Over time, the glue that holds plywood together dries up. Then, walls buckle, split and peel. Panels pop loose. Rooms, doors and windows morph into trick-or-treat versions of themselves. Suburban America, this is to say, is becoming unstuck.

Fifty years ago, the first Levittown opened in Hempstead, N.Y. A planned community of 17,000 identical houses, Levittown instantly became the prototype for the mass suburban development that would pour over the countryside in the decades to come, displacing pastures, potato fields and orange groves with affordable versions of the American dream.

Fifty minus 40 equals a nice round 10. The postwar suburban dream is now entering its second decade of physical obsolescence, and there's not much Martha Stewart can do about it. No wallpaper pattern, potpourri scent or colonial stencil can reverse the effect of passing time on the ranch houses, Cape Cods and saltboxes that millions of Americans have called home. What planners call the first-ring suburb, the belt of single-family houses built between 1947 and 1977 around metropolitan cores, is fast wearing out. But some planners believe that the recycling of the first ring is the key to determining the way that Americans will live in the next 50 years.

The social glue in these communities has also weakened. The population of the first ring is aging. The parents of the baby-boomers, the Depression Era generation that pioneered what the historian Kenneth T. Jackson called the crabgrass frontier, are long retired. Houses are not only physically decrepit; their designs are out of date. As recently as 1978, 79 percent of the residents in the first-ring suburbs of Minneapolis were members of one-job, two-parent nuclear families. By 1996, the proportion had declined to 28 percent. Zoning prevents the redesign of suburban houses and the subdivision of lots to meet the needs of the new population.

The relationship between suburb and city -- bedroom communities and urban workplaces -- has been eroded by edge cities, office parks, and second and third rings. This new suburban configuration is poorly served by public transportation. The commercial corridors that once linked housing, jobs, shopping and social services now connect mainly to car dealerships, fast food outlets, big box superstores and other overly identified flying objects of the free-floating American landscape.

New, poorer first-ring residents find it hard to gain access to a physically dispersed job market. The transition from an industrial to a service economy has undermined the security of the blue-collar middle class. In short, the first ring is in a state of emergency similar to that suffered by the cities suburbanites fled.

City to Suburbs: Drop Dead

No doubt many city dwellers would love to see that headline. After all, aren't suburbanites the people who left the city to rot? Who drained the city of middle-class stability? Who abandoned the public realm in pursuit of private gratification? Who cares if their ticky-tacky walls come tumbling down?

In fact, according to William Morrish, a professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota, the older center cities have a major stake in the future of the first ring. Mr. Morrish, director of the university's Design Center for Urban American Landscape, points out that 40 years ago, first-ring suburbs defined the metropolitan edge. Today, they have been repositioned from the edge to the middle. A deteriorating first ring gives investors and corporations one more reason to bypass cities altogether in favor of the second and third rings. Why jump into an even larger rotting core?

Moreover, the border separating the urban center from the first ring has become porous. Suburbanites fear the spread of crime and other social problems from the city, but the reverse can also happen. Rundown suburban communities can destabilize adjacent city neighborhoods. Inadequate schools and libraries can serve as a reverse magnet, propelling first-ring dwellers toward already overtaxed amenities in the city.

Thus far, the first ring's predicament has drawn scant official attention; it doesn't look as apocalyptic as inner-city blight. Buckling plywood may make an ideal subject for ''This Old House,'' but not for the evening news. And there is a perception that Federal and state governments have already done too much for suburbs at cities' expense: Highways, mortgage programs, artificially low prices for gas.

In recent years, new ways of thinking have emerged to grapple with suburban development. The Congress for the New Urbanism, a group founded in 1993, has drawn nationwide attention for advocating compact communities composed of neo-traditional houses. Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the group's founders, came to prominence with the planning of Seaside, an elite resort town on Florida's Gulf Coast.

The Congress has concentrated its energies more on improving the design of new suburban developments than on rehabilitating old ones. Still, its annual conferences have helped foster a corps of architects and planners who specialize in suburban redevelopment. And it has increased public awareness that the city has spread far beyond its historic 19th-century dimensions.